


drag you down

by _helios (the_heliades)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Blood and Injury, Body Modification, Cyborgs, Enemies to Lovers, Heroes to Villains, Identity Porn, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Non-Graphic Human Experimentation, Past Character Death, Spoilers, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27573928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_heliades/pseuds/_helios
Summary: The game is over and they both know it, but Jaemin takes a moment to just take in the sight of Haechan, sitting on the desk with his pink flushed cheeks and his kiss-bitten lips. This is his victory, and they both know it. Jaemin wants to immortalise this forever, wants to take this to Hana, to Dul, to all the righteous heroes that dart around through the night and tell them that even if Haechan is on their team, even if Haechan fights by their side, a part of him will always belong to Jaemin.Jaemin is a villain. Donghyuck is a hero (for now).(the villain au canon divergence sequel to 'it's our overflowing confidence and instinct' // can be read as a standalone)
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 77





	drag you down

**Author's Note:**

> This is the long overdue villain au sequel to 'It's Our Overflowing Confidence and Instinct', where Jaemin was not revealed to be a villain at the end of the fic and instead continued on a path of villany for eight years. 
> 
> A massive thank you to everyone that encouraged this, and everyone who has been waiting patiently for several months for this, especially Fae, Leah, Isha, Evie, Leanna, Avi and Bon (apologies if I missed anyone!). I hope that you all enjoy it!
> 
> One final note, this contains spoilers for 'A New Ending is a Different Beginning'. Certain events, such as Jaemin and Jisung's past, are revealed in this fic, although the effect of these events are different (ie while this might reveal some secrets about the hero fic, it doesn't give away the ending to the hero fic.)

‘Come on!’

Donghyuck grabs the secretary by the shoulder, hauling her up from where she was hiding behind her desk. Her makeup has been smudged away from tears and sweat and she’s pale as a ghost beneath it. If it were any other day, he would have offered her a tissue and bottle of water to give her time to collect herself.

But the building is about to blow, and he needs to get the civilians _out_.

‘Leave your bag and your shoes,’ he says, dragging her over to where the other secretary is trembling next to the watercooler. She’s practically dead weight, her legs weak as she stumbles behind him. He glances at the lanyard around her neck, at the lanyard around the other secretary’s neck. ‘Heiran, I need you to listen to me.’

It snaps her attention to him, even as she stifles another sniffle.

‘I need you to take off your shoes and leave them here. They’ll only slow you down,’ he repeats. The company is a decently sized one, with enough money behind it that both secretaries would look impeccably dressed and elegant in any other situation. ‘I need you and Seojun to take the fire escape on the east side of the building.’

He points to the innocuous door on the far side of the room. Heiran supresses another gasping sob, but she follows his hand and nods when she spots the door. Seojun, who looks about five years younger than Heiran, forces himself up to stand and he sways where he stands.

‘Don’t run down the stairs,’ Donghyuck instructs, keeping his voice as level and as calm as he can, ‘but you have to be quick about it. If you find anyone else, take them with you but only if you’re physically able to. Don’t worry about anyone too injured to move, I’ll get them out. Once you get to the ground floor, get as far away from the building as you can. There should be first responders on the way, and they’ll be able to get you out. Do you understand?’

Heiran nods, toeing off her high heels and placing them to the side. She’s still pale, but her eyes are no longer glassy from fear. She wipes away the tears on the cuff of her sleeve, and it’s enough for Donghyuck to let go of her.

‘Seojun,’ Donghyuck says, turning to the other secretary. He’s still trembling, pressed against the watercooler, and looking behind Donghyuck to the burning computers, the destroyed desks behind them. ‘Can you repeat what I just said?’

It takes a few moments for the words to click in for the man. Seojun blinks, focusing on Donghyuck. ‘Down the stairs, don’t run. Get away.’ His voice is a shaking rasp, a whisper that Donghyuck can barely hear but it’s enough.

Donghyuck runs his eyes over the pair of them one last time. They don’t look injured, just numb from the shock of the first explosion that rocked the building just half an hour before. There should be no problem with getting them out of the building, as long as the second bomb doesn’t go off too soon.

‘And shoes off,’ Donghyuck repeats. ‘You don’t want to slip on your way down. Now both of you, _go._ ’

Donghyuck doesn’t bother making sure they make their way to the fire escape, just turns around and strides over to the main offices of the building. He can hear them scrambling behind him, Heiran repeating his orders under her breath.

‘Level four has been cleared,’ Donghyuck says through the small radio that he has wired into his suit. ‘I’m heading down to level three.’

‘Level three is free of civilians. Move to level two, Yeolhana,’ a crackling, flat voice says through the headset, ‘your objective is to get as many civilians out of the building as you can. There’s nothing there.’

Agent Kim, the handler who is running the operation, is calm and collected, _detached_ even and Donghyuck wishes he could punch the man straight in his boring, dull face.

‘There still could be something on level three,’ Donghyuck says.

‘Move to level two.’

Donghyuck huffs.

‘ _It looks like they were the last two_.’ Jaehyun’s voice is a more welcome one, although tinny and thin through the radio. Donghyuck has trained himself over the years to pick up on the slightest sound through their comms, thanks to the older, weaker models they’d used when he was a teenager. ‘ _Security cameras are showing that everyone is moving down the east fire escape_.’

‘He should see if he can find anything that might be another bomb,’ Taeyong adds, his voice louder but no less tinny, ‘but if you can’t find it in two minutes then get out of there. I’m finishing up on level eight now. Let us know if you’re moving up through the floors rather than down, Mark can only do an evac once.’

‘No,’ Agent Kim says, ‘Yeolhana’s objective was to clear civilians. He is to remove himself from the premises, if that has been achieved.’

When Donghyuck was a sidekick, barely seventeen and still dressed in the hodgepodge suit that he and Taeyong had put together, he dreamt of being a _proper_ hero. He dreamt of a suit that people would recognise on the street, he dreamt of technology that was ahead of the game and a handler who was there to support him.

‘Fine,’ Taeyong says, ‘Yeolhana, move out and meet us at the rendezvous.’

In the past years, Donghyuck had gotten a lot of that. The team had gotten bigger, gotten stronger, gotten that support that allowed them to be more than kids skulking in the shadows. He is no longer wrapped in activewear, patched from the days that he tripped or got it caught in a fight. His suit is still lightweight, but it is a rich green and made from a specially woven fabric that was designed to be stab-proof. He has Kevlar vests that are perfectly fitted to his form, and boots that didn’t wear out every six months.

If he wears it on the street, people know his hero name, people respect him. He has a radio that works, and his weapons are usually among the most innovative.

But it comes hand in hand with an iron fist that Donghyuck can’t escape, that none of them can escape.

Donghyuck spits out an agreement, and then switches off his microphone.

He reaches for his belt, hand settling on one of the collapsible escrima sticks that he’s got tucked away to the side. So far, they haven’t found any of the perpetrators of the first explosion, but it had happened on multiple levels so he’s sure that there’s got to be at least one person wondering around, able to evade the security cameras.

When he was a teenager, his heart pounded in his chest and his mind ran a million miles an hour when he had to clear a building. But Donghyuck has long since grown out of being a sidekick, has long since settled into the life of being a hero, and although there’s adrenaline pumping through him, Donghyuck feels calm.

Confident that the floor is empty, Donghyuck heads to the other fire escape on the north side of the building and begins to make his way down to the third floor for a final check of that floor. The building registry said that the offices on the third floor, and Agent Kim explicitly told him to leave it. But Donghyuck can’t.

Donghyuck’s hand hovers over the metal of the door for a second, only detecting a bit of a chill from the cool metal. It’s enough for Donghyuck and he eases the door open, stepping out onto the main floor. 

‘ _Yeolhana, you are breaking protocol_ ,’ Agent Kim’s dry, dead voice says.

Donghyuck ignores it, his microphone still switched off. He doesn’t dare step forward, not when Agent Kim is watching him through the cameras, but he lets his eyes drift over the room. It’s supposed to be completely abandoned, but there is a line of computers in the room that Donghyuck is itching to check out.’

‘Yeolhana, Leave the room.’

‘ _Yeolhana_ ,’ Jaehyun’s voice cuts through in a crackle of static, _‘you’re blinking out! Get moving._ Now _._ ’

‘Fuck,’ Donghyuck says.

He can hear Mark and Taeyong in the radio as well, voices blending together in worry, but Donghyuck doesn’t have a chance to respond before he’s slammed backwards back into the fire escape by a man taller and strong than him.

The escrima stick snaps to full length with a flick of Donghyuck’s wrist and he swings it into the mass that pushed him into the fire escape. It’s enough to loosen the man’s grip on him. Donghyuck ducks out from under him and swings himself over the staircase railing to the landing below. He lands with a neat tuck, and immediately moves down the flight of stairs.

He’s smaller, but he’s faster.

‘Come on, come on,’ he says, tapping at the radio to turn his microphone back on. Jaehyun’s warnings are the last thing he hears before it goes.

Silent.

‘Hello, Haechan.’ The man’s voice echoes through the concrete stairwell, edging into the artificial and electronic. It is as familiar to Donghyuck as Mark and Taeyong’s vocal modulations, as his own vocal modulations. ‘I’d almost say that you don’t like me, Yeolhana.’

Donghyuck makes the mistake of looking up through the staircase.

Yeolset leans against the metal railing, arms folded casually and a smirk on his face as he looks down at Donghyuck. There’s a sharpness to his smirk, a mocking tilt to his head and it makes Donghyuck curl his own lips up into a snarl.

He’s always hated how Yeolset dresses, always in a pair of jeans and loose t-shirt. It would be casual, the same thing as what any other man would where when wandering through the streets of Hongdae, if not for the black domino mask on his face. Donghyuck knows it’s a deliberate imitation of their teams’ signature mask, just as Yeolset’s name is a deliberate imitation of their names.

It would be human, if not for the metal arm.

Years ago, seeing a villain so at ease would have made Donghyuck shudder and reaching for his own weapons with shaking hands. But Donghyuck has been a hero for three years, and he doesn’t flinch as he glares back.

It’s a moment suspended in time, despite being set against the dim emergency lights and the wailing shriek of the fire alarm.

Donghyuck knows that Yeolset can see better than he can. Even from two floors below Donghyuck can see the glow of Yeolset’s bionic eye, blue and bright behind his own mask. It can pick up the slightest movement in the darkest rooms, but that doesn’t stop Donghyuck from reaching for his belt and tucking away the escrima stick.

‘Oh Haechannie, you’re not going to fight me, are you?’ Yeolset mocks.

‘Always,’ Donghyuck says, and then he throws two shuriken up towards Yeolset. He turns away before they hit, hearing one rebound off the metal as Yeolset bats it away and then the yelp of pain as the other hits his flesh arm.

Yeolset never anticipates the second attack, Donghyuck can’t help but think with a smirk.

He leaps down the remaining stairs, glad that he wasn’t on the top floors near Taeyong and Mark, when he hears Yeolset’s heavier footsteps echoing behind him. Donghyuck doesn’t even think, just throws himself to the side and away from Yeolset’s punch.

Donghyuck isn’t a fan of short-range fighting, but he’s good at it after almost eight years. He pushes himself away from the stairwell wall, smashing Yeolset into the banister with all his weight before he ducks under and drives a fist into Yeolset’s chin.

Yeolset lets out a snarl. What he lacks in finesse he makes up in brute strength, and his arm swings out to push Donghyuck down the handful of stairs left. Donghyuck tries to contain the grunt of pain when he hits the stairs, but he’s able to absorb some of it into his hands and knees before he’s kicked in the stomach down the rest of the stairs.

Donghyuck spits out a mouthful of blood as he stands up again. Yeolset storms down the stairs towards him but isn’t fast enough to dodge the knee that Donghyuck drives into his side. It’s not the strongest kick, but it makes Yeolset fold over and that’s enough for Donghyuck to leverage himself onto Yeolset’s back.

It’s easier to focus, with Yeolset’s body below Donghyuck, squeezed between his thighs. Even as Yeolset raises up into a standing position, even as Yeolset slams Donghyuck back into the concrete wall behind him to loosen the hold Donghyuck has on him, Donghyuck is able to reach for the dagger strapped to his calf and drive it into Yeolset’s shoulder.

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Yeolset yells, stumbling forward as Donghyuck wretches it out and lands nimbly on his feet.

Donghyuck sheathes the dagger, and rushes for the fire exit. He pushes it open into the cool darkness of the night, and stumbles into the alleyway behind the building. His comms are still hauntingly silent, Yeolset too close and too in control of the technology around him for Donghyuck to call for help.

He does his best to sprint down the alley, but there’s a shot of pain up his leg from the fall down the staircase and he can only stumble away from the exit and hopefully to where Mark or Yuta are waiting to get him away from the building.

It’s louder outside, with the wails of the fire engines and the screams of the employees who had only just got out. So, he doesn’t notice Yeolset behind him until he’s pinned to the wall of the alley. Yeolset’s taller, stronger, _inhuman_ body didn’t scare Donghyuck in the stairwell. However, this time his bionic hand has a tight grip on Donghyuck’s wrists, wrenching them uncomfortably high above Donghyuck’s head.

There’s a crackle, a spark of warning, to remind Donghyuck of the fact that even though Donghyuck can beat Yeolset at hand to hand, he’s useless against Yeolset’s powers.

Donghyuck can see the glint of Yeolset’s smirk, like a shark, and the anger in his eyes.

‘You stabbed me,’ Yeolset whispers, an inch away from Donghyuck’s ear. Donghyuck hates how a shiver runs up his spine, hates how the fight drops out of him. He glares at where he thinks Yeolset’s, barely lit in the dark, knowing that Yeolset can see him even in the dark.

There is little Yeolset delights more in than in the way Donghyuck falls silent when he pushes away Donghyuck’s fringe in a mock gesture of sweetness. Donghyuck is half terrified by the power of the man’s limbs, enhanced through years of cybernetic upgrades, and half excited. 

‘That, my Haechannie, wasn’t very nice,’ Yeolset says, and Donghyuck can feel the words against his lips, can feel the lift of Yeolset’s smile beneath his mask. But Yeolset doesn’t move forward, his smile only growing in anticipation. 

Donghyuck is the one who surges forward, capturing the other man’s lips in a brutal kiss.

‘Fuck you,’ Donghyuck snarls against Yeolset’s lips, drawing back a fraction of an inch. ‘I hope you fucking bleed out.’

Yeolset’s free hand comes to grip at Donghyuck’s jaw, holding Donghyuck’s face in place as he leans in. It’s his human hand, the one that is warm and calloused and almost delicate, but it isn’t soft. Donghyuck could twist away from the thumb pressing into his chin, but he doesn’t.

Instead he locks eyes with Yeolset’s, the only thing recognisable under the black domino masks. His human eye is as much alight with amusement as it is with danger. His enhanced eye glows bright and blue, illuminates Yeolset’s face just enough that Donghyuck can see the tilt of his nose, the uplift of his lip.

It’s a view Donghyuck has gotten used to.

Donghyuck swallows, feeling the gentle pressure of Yeolset’s fingers against his throat at the moment. Yeolset is slower to lean in, he always is, and he fits his lips against Donghyuck in a way that mocks romance. His kisses are soft, a barely there brush that Donghyuck leans into, tries to deepen. Does deepen.

His lips are soft, but his hand squeezes tighter against Donghyuck’s wrists, grinding the bones together.

‘What would Hana say about this, huh?’ Yeolset taunts, a gasp into Donghyuck’s mouth that Donghyuck greedily accepts. ‘His pretty little sidekick… what was it he always said? Engaging with the enemy?’

Donghyuck bites Yeolset’s lips, just to hear his hiss of pain.

‘He’s not in charge of me anymore,’ Donghyuck says.

Don’t engage with the enemy.

Taeyong’s words echoes through Donghyuck’s mind, even as Donghyuck leans up into Yeolset’s smirk. It was one of the first things he ever learnt, one of the lessons that has stuck with Donghyuck since he was a teenager. Donghyuck has long since learnt to not talk to villains, to not fall into their taunts and their lies and distractions.

And yet.

Yeolset presses in closer, his body is a line of heat, and muscle and steel. Even with his metahuman power and his cybernetic enhancements, it’s obvious to Donghyuck that he’s put in the time and effort to refine and strengthen what makes him human. It’s obvious that he’s let no part of himself be weak, and Donghyuck hates how much he likes it, how his fingers itch to map Yeolset’s skin as much as they itch to push him away.

‘You know you should just join me, it’s a lot more fun.’

He asks it every time, a whisper into Donghyuck’s ear before he runs off into the night. Every time Donghyuck gives him the same answer.

‘Fuck. Off.’

Yeolset laughs, breath against Donghyuck’s neck, before his teeth are sinking into Donghyuck’s skin. It’s short, but hard and Donghyuck hisses out another curse before Yeolset releases his hands and steps back.

Donghyuck’s hand instinctively falls on the bite, pressing into the sting as he looks up at Yeolset. He’s stepped further back, and even though Donghyuck’s eyes are adjusting to the darkness, it’s the glow of his bionic eye, the shadows cast against his smirk, that Donghyuck sees the best.

He could kill Yeolset, right now, if he wanted to.

‘I’ll see you next time,’ Yeolset says. Then the third floor of the building blows up.

Donghyuck’s close enough to the building that he’s almost knocked off his feet, catching himself on the wall of the building. He needs to move, but the breath was kicked out of him by the blast and his ears are ringing. He forces himself to stand, forces himself to look up, and Yeolset is gone.

There’s almost no trace of him. There are no footprints on the floor, no bins that have been knocked over in his rush to get out of the building. There’s just the sting on Donghyuck’s neck and an ache in his wrists and crotch that he decidedly doesn’t think about. He wipes his lips against his palm, wipes away salvia and blood that could belong to either of them, wipes away the memory of Yeolset’s mouth against him.

He turns to head back to the rendezvous point that he and Taeyong agreed on earlier when he spots a flash drive on the floor, only noticeable in the flicker of the building’s flames. Donghyuck picks it up and rolls it in his hands, studying it.

It’s one of the cheap ones that you can get off Gmarket for a few thousand won, probably bought in bulk, with no security and no lid. On the surface it’s absolutely the sort of flash drive that most companies don’t want their employees using because data could too easily get misplaced. Donghyuck barks out his first laugh of the night.

‘What the hell was that?’ Agent Kim says, his voice like shards of ice.

They’re sitting in a conference room for the debrief. Agent Kim stands at the end of the table, looking over the heroes with contempt and anger marring the bland façade that he usually adopts.

Donghyuck doesn’t care, glaring up at Agent Kim through his mask. He’s long since realised that he doesn’t care what Agent Kim, or Agent Lee, or Agent Kwon have to say. He realises, looking at the cold, brown eyes of the man in front of him, that he doesn’t even know if this _is_ Agent Kim. Their three handlers look the same, forgettable and plain, with the same haircut, the same grey suit and the same monotone drone.

‘I had a hunch, and I followed it,’ Donghyuck says.

‘You made an agreement when you joined with us, and that was to follow our instructions,’ Agent Kim says. If he were anyone else, he would have been spitting blood in anger, right up in Donghyuck’s face. But instead he stands at the front of the room, staring down Donghyuck, unafraid to call him out in front of the other heroes on his team.

‘If he hadn’t followed the hunch, we wouldn’t have been able to connect the explosions with Yeolset,’ Mark says, from where he’s sitting across from Donghyuck at the conference table.

‘We already knew it was Yeolset,’ Agent Kim says.

‘Then why didn’t you tell us?’ Donghyuck’s hands curl into fists by his sides. ‘Did you not think it was important information?’

‘It was deemed irrelevant for the purpose of evacuating civilians and trying to reduce the risk of the building blowing up.’

‘Yes,’ Donghyuck says, ‘but we were looking for a _bomb_. Yeolset doesn’t use bombs.’

‘Donghyuck,’ Taeyong says, voice low and firm.

Even though Agent Kim is technically their boss, Donghyuck can see that he freezes in place. It had taken years for Taeyong to develop the reputation that Taeil had at his peak, but he’s one of the most senior heroes in the game right now, having been a hero for over a decade and a half. It would be gratifying, watching the slight twitch of fear in Agent Kim’s eyes.

‘He’s not wrong,’ Taeyong says, turning to Agent Kim. ‘It was a waste of resources to have Yuta and I look for an explosive if we were working against Yeolset. We could have been deployed in a more effective manner, we could have helped with the evacuation or even tried to cut him off.’

‘There were teams in place to handle Yeolset,’ Agent Kim says, voice still cold and his gaze moving back to where Donghyuck is slouched in his seat. ‘Teams who weren’t able to move in because Yeolset deviated from his projected course when Mr Lee thought it appropriate to disobey orders.’

Donghyuck knows that they’re better for having returned to an agency, know that they’re better for the resources and the support they receive. But he wants to reach over and slam Agent Kim’s face into the table, wants to get that smarmy gaze off of him.

‘I opened a door, I don’t make any effect on what Yeolset may or may not do,’ Donghyuck hisses. ‘You should have given us all the details, and you should let us do our damn jobs. We know what we’re doing.’

Mark’s toe nudges Donghyuck’s leg, a silent sign for Donghyuck to shut up.

‘We all know that whatever grudge Yeolset has against your team is personal, that he goes out of his way to antagonise all of you. If we can reduce your exposure to him and get a more neutral party to combat him, that frees you all up for other roles,’ Agent Kim says.

Donghyuck is glad that his blood is boiling, that he’s long since used to hiding parts of himself. If he was still a teenager he might have blushed, bright and bold at knowing that Yeolset does go out of his way to antagonise Donghyuck, in a way that’s different to how he mocks Taeyong or fights Mark. But Donghyuck has kept a tight hold on how his and Yeolset’s fights end and he’s not letting Agent Kim find out.

‘You look fucking wrecked,’ Donghyuck says, as he walks through the entrance to The Base. 

The Base is the biggest upgrade since Donghyuck was a teenager, chasing villains into the night. They’re no longer limited to the derelict, condemned buildings that no-one dares enters, no longer limited to the backroom of a café that legally can only fit four people according to the fire safety laws. The spaceship that Johnny crash landed in, more than thirty years ago, has slowly been taken over, converted into something functional for Donghyuck and the heroes to use.

Mark’s laid out on Johnny’s awful sofa, the first piece of furniture he bought himself when he moved into his first apartment at twenty and hung onto for three apartments and one house before he died. No-one could bring themselves to throw it out, and so it was one of the many things of Johnny’s that cluttered up The Base. It’s uncomfortable and smells a little bit no matter how much they clean it, but it’s everyone’s favourite sofa.

Mark lifts his legs just high enough for Donghyuck to slip under, before dropping them back into Donghyuck’s lap.

‘So do you,’ Mark says. But it’s said with a smile, and Donghyuck turns to look at Mark Lee, lain out on the couch and exhausted at the edges. He’s not changed since the fight, still dressed in the black and red suit that declared he was the new Dul. ‘Pull your hood up.’

Donghyuck curses. One of the upgrades to his suit is that it has a high collar to keep his warm. His favourite hoodie, however, is a few sizes too big and gapes just enough to reveal the fading redness of Yeolset’s bite on his neck.

‘You gotta stop it with the guy,’ Mark says, ‘I know that we joke that Jaehyun turned good guy because Taeyong is pretty, but Yeolset has _actually_ killed people.’

‘I know,’ Donghyuck hisses.

The Base is larger than The Lair, as Donghyuck used to fondly call the now demolished building he and Taeyong operated out of, but sound carries further. Even though Taeyong and the other heroes aren’t in the room with them, doesn’t mean they can’t hear what he and Mark are talking about.

‘I’m not trying to preach,’ Mark says, while definitely trying to preach. ‘I just want you to be careful.’

‘Can we talk about this when everyone leaves, please?’ Donghyuck asks. ‘I promise you; I’m not going to get hurt. I just…’ He exhales, tips his head back against the couch and looks up at the cavernous ceiling above them, lit by some alien light that Donghyuck never quite worked out. ‘It fucking sucks.’

‘I know it does,’ Mark sighs.

Donghyuck remembers being fifteen years old and giggling with Mark, high on the adrenaline after a fight. Eight years later and the two of them are the first in the break room, exhaustion of the fight dripping from their limbs.

He can’t remember when that happened.

‘But it’s not about you getting hurt,’ Mark says, ‘it’s about you getting killed. I can’t lose you too.’

Donghyuck exhales, and he squeezes Mark’s leg in as much an attempt to comfort himself as to comfort Mark. He can’t promise it though, can’t force the words out even as Mark tips his head back and presses the palms of his hands against his tired, tired eyes.

Instead, they sit in the silence of the room and let it stretch out between them. It’s a comfortable silence, despite the worry that sparks through Mark, and it’s almost enough for Donghyuck to pretend that they’re at home, relaxing on the couch.

But it doesn’t take long for Taeyong to walk through the entry of the room, Yuta and Jaehyun following on his heel. None of them have changed out of their costumes, unlike Mark and Donghyuck, and they make an intimidating sight as they stride across the room.

Donghyuck knows that they’re technically all on the same team, but sometimes Donghyuck feels like a sidekick waiting for the full heroes. He knows Mark does too, from the way Mark swings his legs off Donghyuck’s lap and sits up properly.

‘Do you need any medical?’ Taeyong asks.

‘We’re good,’ Mark says. ‘Just a little bruised up.’

Donghyuck doesn’t think about the bruises rising against his skin, doesn’t think about the aches that will undoubtedly keep in him in bed when he wakes up in the mid-morning tomorrow. Instead, he can’t help the wave of satisfaction in knowing that he _won_ the fight. There’s pride in knowing that while he only walked away with a few bruises, Yeolset had a fresh stab wound in his shoulder.

‘I’m fine,’ Donghyuck says as well, and it earns him a nod from Taeyong.

Jaehyun and Yuta settle down onto the other chairs in the room. Not much of the other furniture has quite the same heart as the Johnny sofa, but Donghyuck feels like he deserves it.

‘Can I just say,’ Donghyuck begins, ‘that I absolutely hate Agent Kim, and Agent Lee. Agent Kwon’s okay, but only because he brings snacks to pre-briefs sometime.’

‘I know you hate them,’ Taeyong says, his voice exhausted as he combs a hand through his hair. He looks, for a moment, more like the young adult that Donghyuck had chased after that first night when he decided he wanted to become a sidekick. But he’s on the wrong side of thirty, for hero work, and Donghyuck can also see the scars on Taeyong’s body, can also see the way his hands don’t close quite into a fist anymore. ‘But we need them.’

Donghyuck sighs but he doesn’t waste time arguing, not today.

Instead, he closes his eyes and pretends that the world is just him and the men in this room.

…

Being stabbed was fine in the moment, when Jaemin was running high on the adrenaline and excitement at seeing Haechan. It had even been fine immediately after the fight when Jaemin was running away into the night, because Haechan had stabbed Jaemin in his good shoulder, the one that is more machine than man. But the adrenaline has worn off, and the weight of his metal arm has started to pull enough that Jaemin’s shoulder hurts like a fucking bitch.

‘I’m going to kill him next time,’ Jaemin announces, throwing open the front door to his apartment and walking across to the couch. He crashes onto it, face first, and just lets himself breathe through the pain. He’s been up for almost thirty hours by this point, and Jaemin might be designed to run more efficiently than your average human but he’s still technically human. Sometimes you get stabbed, and you want to cry into your pillow. It happens.

‘You say that every time,’ Jisung says, looking up from where he’s sharpening his knives by the window. ‘And yet you never kill him.’

‘I’d kill him for you,’ Sungchan pipes up from his bedroom, poking his head out through the door. ‘You know that I’d be happy to do it.’

‘Fuck off.’ Jaemin raises his non-stabbed arm and flips the bird ‘You just want to ruin my fun.’

‘I also want to kill someone,’ Sungchan corrects. ‘Or even just fight someone. It’s been ages since I fought someone. If he’s good enough to stab you, he must be a delight to fight.’

‘Nah,’ Jisung says. ‘Jaemin just fucking sucks at hand to hand.’

It’s not a lie, but Jaemin still lifts his head up from the pillows just so that he can glare at Jisung. It doesn’t work. Everyone knows that Jisung is Jaemin’s favourite roommate, even more so than Shotaro who doesn’t make rude comments at Jaemin when he gets home. Jisung is almost wholly unaffected by Jaemin’s glare, more likely to shy away at the excessive affection that Jaemin likes to dole out when he’s feeling particularly lonely.

‘Sit up,’ Jisung says, kicking Jaemin’s legs. ‘I can’t stitch you up if you bleed all over our couch.’

Jaemin groans, but he levers himself into a sitting position. This couch is their second one in three months, and none of them really want to go through the process of navigating IKEA again anytime soon. Last time had been hard enough, between Jaemin tucked into a too-large hoodie that hid half of the mechanical upgrades to his body, Sungchan trying to work out if the knives were salvageable and Shotaro insisting that they needed a proper laundry sorting system because their socks kept getting mixed up.

Not to mention that their neighbours would probably notice if they set fire to another couch in the alley.

‘Did you at least get what you needed?’ Sungchan says, walking out of his bedroom and dropping onto the coffee table. ‘Besides trying to hookup with your favourite hero?’

‘I managed to extract all the data from their computers. Fucking idiots didn’t think about wiping their computers before they abandoned the building. It was almost too easy.’ Jaemin lets a smile grow over his face, lets it get sharp at the corners. ‘Unfortunately, no-one had stayed behind, so I couldn’t talk to anyone personally. But there’s always next time. I blew up their computers, so they’re probably going to be in a frenzy trying to cover their tracks.’

‘What about the kids?’ Jisung asks. His words are quiet, a contrast against the firm pressure of his hands against the flesh of Jaemin’s shoulder, he’s always been the best of them at stitching someone up. Even when he was a kid, his eyes were cold and his hands were steady as he pulled bullets from wounds, reset shoulders, snapped a man’s neck.

‘There were a few,’ Jaemin says, lips pressed together. ‘I was too late for a couple, but I managed to get about five out before the heroes got there.’

‘As long as they don’t get their hands on them,’ Jisung says, before his needle pierces Jaemin’s skin and he slowly starts to stitch up the gash in Jaemin’s shoulder. Jaemin bites back a curse, bites back the frustration at not having upgraded the entire shoulder.

‘I would never,’ Jaemin promises, ‘I’d fucking kill them if they ever got their hands on the kids.’ And he had, time and time again. ‘They’re with Hendery, he’ll get them somewhere safe.’

‘You really trust him?’

Jaemin nods, letting out a hiss of pain as Jisung carefully shifts his arm in his shoulder. Jaemin knows the mechanics of his robotic arm, but he doesn’t know how the human part of him works, has never cared to understand how the human part of him works.

‘Always,’ Jaemin says.

Sometimes Jaemin forgets that Sungchan, Shotaro and Jisung were raised alone. He forgets that they were raised in a laboratory, surrounded by scientists and trainers and kept separate from the rest of them. He forgets that when he first found them, all those years ago, they had been barely children who had only known twenty faces their whole lives.

Jaemin had been lucky, he had been well into his teenaged years when he was first brought to the lab. He had been lucky, because his powers had been compatible with someone else’s and they’d been kept together for months on. He had been lucky, because he and Hendery had each other.

Even after eight years, Jaemin isn’t sure if he necessarily likes Hendery. But he trusts Hendery more than he trusts himself.

‘Good enough for me,’ Sungchan says, and Jaemin is amazed at the reminder at just how lucky he is to know Sungchan, how lucky he is to have Sungchan’s trust. ‘I’m heading to bed. Let me know if you need me to do anything tomorrow.’

Jaemin nods, and watches as Sungchan slips back into his room, closing the door behind him.

It leaves him alone with Jisung. Jaemin isn’t sure if he’s worried, but he tips his head up to flash a smile at Jisung. It doesn’t work, Jisung’s expression barely changing from the cool, assessing expression that he always reverts to when he has to patch Jaemin up after a fight.

‘You should be more careful,’ Jisung says. ‘I know you think it’s fun, taunting the heroes like that. But it’s dangerous. They’re not afraid to hurt you.’

‘I know that,’ Jaemin says. He still remembers the time he fought with Dul 2.0, shortly after he took over from the original Dul, and the man kicked him so hard that Jaemin had three broken ribs.

‘Then why do you do it?’ Jisung hisses. ‘Because you’re still human, underneath all these modifications that you’ve done to yourself. You constantly go after these people, just to play games with them, when we have more important things to do.’

‘Jisung,’ Jaemin says with a groan, tipping his head back and looking up at the ceiling. ‘One of the things that Chaerin never taught you is that there’s more to life than just the fight. Sure, I could go in and get out without being detected. I could blow up the buildings, I could get the kids out of the labs easily. Hell, you know that I could probably hack the data from here if I really wanted to. But I need excitement, I need danger.’

‘You need to feel in control of the situation, so that they’re floundering after you.’

‘That too,’ Jaemin agrees. ‘It’s not all about the fight, Jisung. It’s about so much more than that.’

‘Why can’t you go meet with your friends, have fun that way?’ Jisung says. ‘Do you even have any left?’

A bit of the humour evaporates out of Jaemin, his mouth feels dry as he turns to where Jisung is packing up their first aid kit. He can’t help looking at his hand, at the smooth metal that he’d built himself and installed more than five years earlier.

‘You really think that I can just invite all my friends out for a drink, and show up like this?’ Jaemin waves his hand over his body, over the leg that he was still in the process of upgrading, and the plating that he installed specifically to protect his heart.

‘Why not?’ Jisung says. ‘Just say there was an accident, that you were too scared to see them again. They’re your friends, they’d understand, right?’

It’s been months since he talked to most of them a quick call to Jeno to see how he was settling in with the new boyfriend and a text to Renjun to congratulate him on graduating from his Masters. It’s been even longer since he saw most of them in person, since he was a person.

‘I can’t let them see me like this,’ Jaemin says with a shake of his head, ‘I can’t let them see what I’ve become.’

Jisung presses his lips together, but he thankfully doesn’t comment more on it.

‘I still don’t think you should be gallivanting around with the heroes like that,’ he says instead. ‘Yeolhana is dangerous, you can’t keep chasing after him because you like how his thighs look in his superhero costume. It’s not a good way to meet new people.’

‘Nah,’ Jaemin says, ‘it’s just for fun. Plus, his thighs look _really_ good, you can’t deny that.’

Jaemin isn’t sure who set the rules of the world, that said that heroes and villains must skulk through life in the middle of the night. But he had embraced it wholeheartedly, preferring to use the darkness and the silence as the backdrop of his life and his plans. It did mean that Jaemin rarely experienced the morning, he fell asleep close to five am most days and wakes up sometime in the early afternoon. Jisung and Sungchan are similar, have always been similar.

Shotaro, for some reason that no-one can understand, has always been a morning person. He prefers the light of day, the rush of crowds, and he’s always the only one fully awake when Jaemin stumbles out of his bedroom and into the kitchen.

He’s got a smile on his face, as he types away at his laptop, and only nods a greeting at Jaemin as Jaemin stumbles over to their coffee machine.

They’re supposed to have a no power rule in the apartment. Mainly because the first time Sungchan got drunk he summoned five eldritch beasts into their apartment, and it took them two weeks to fully get rid of the stench. Jaemin doesn’t care, not when he’s exhausted and recovering from a stab wound to the shoulder.

He presses his flesh hand against the coffee machine and lets his already half-closed eyes drift completely shut. Coffee machines are easy, they were among the first machines that Jaemin learnt how to use without creating it himself, and it takes him a few subtle pushes and twitches to align the switches, to send power flooding through. The smell of fresh coffee follows soon after, and Jaemin feels relief wash through his entire body.

‘It’s one button,’ Shotaro says, although he’s got a smile on his face as he shakes his head, ‘and you couldn’t even do that.’

‘I have been _stabbed_ ,’ Jaemin says, with a sniff. ‘I deserve a few concessions. Plus, it’s not like it’s going to actually hurt anyone.’

‘You electrocuted Jisung last week when you were playing with the toaster.’

‘That’s Jisung’s fault for buying a cheap toaster. I can’t work with subpar materials.’ Shotaro hadn’t commented on the fact that Jaemin had also actually improved the toaster, after accidentally electrocuting Jisung. It is almost as good as an industrial one, and waddles across the counter when it’s done to drop off the toast. ‘Jisung can take a little electrocution, anyway.’

Shotaro lets out another bleat of a laugh.

‘Any news about last night?’ Jaemin says, dropping down to the kitchen table. He practically inhales his coffee, a heavy sip leaning across the table. ‘Anything that might be useful?’

‘Just the usual stuff,’ Shotaro says, tapping at the keyboard, ‘destruction of property, warnings to stay away from you because you’re dangerous and unhinged. Endless praise for the Hana and Dul for getting everyone out safely despite the danger.’

‘Eugh,’ Jaemin groans. ‘Maybe I should go back to monologuing, that at least usually resulted in a few good soundbites.’

‘Jaemin,’ Shotaro says, his eyes darting up and narrowing into that serious stare, the one that pins him in place and reminds Jaemin of the fact that Shotaro is just as dangerous as the rest of their flatmates. ‘No-one wants to put up with those, ever.’

‘They were good.’

‘They were terrible, even after you practised them in front of a mirror.’ Shotaro is supposed to be the nice one in the apartment. Supposed to be.

‘You guys never used to complain!’

‘We’d just been broken out of a laboratory by a giant robot controlled by an eighteen-year-old boy and hadn’t talked to anyone new in over five years, of course we weren’t going to complain,’ Jisung says, walking into the room with what looks like every vegetable from the market in his hand. ‘Don’t go back to the monologues, or I’ll stab you myself.’

‘I’m going to trade you all in,’ Jaemin says with a shake of his head. ‘Maybe for a few puppies, or a rabbit.’

Shotaro lets out a small giggle at Jaemin’s words, but it tapers off. His fingers top where they’re tapping away at the keys, and Jaemin knows, _Jaemin knows_ , that he’s finally found something important.

‘What is it?’

‘An interview with one of the office workers,’ Shotaro says, his voice nowhere as light as it was but something that’s almost excitement rising through his voice. ‘Who was very upset that his workplace caught fire last night and that he won’t be able to go in to retrieve his laptop.’

He spins the laptop around and Jaemin blinks, starting the video in front of them.

There’s a man talking to the reporter, a light sheen of sweat on his brow and his eyes darting back and forth even as he talks about how unfair it is that he’s not allowed inside the building. He looks ordinary, looks boring, but Jaemin can hear Jisung’s breath catch in his throat, can see the delighted smile on Shotaro’s face.

‘Who is he?’ Jaemin asks.

‘He’s one of the scientists assigned to us,’ Shotaro says. ‘I never caught his name, but he was high up. He’d always be testing me, to see if my powers grew any more than they did.’

Jisung’s groceries have dropped to the floor, and he bends over Jaemin’s shoulder. There’s that slight shake to his body, the one that he gets when he’s itching for a fight, ready to take off in a rush of power and strength and anger. ‘He was in charge of my project,’ Jisung says, ‘he would come in once a month, interview me and then observe me fighting.’

‘So, he’s important,’ Jaemin says.

‘Very.’

Jaemin doesn’t recognise him, but his facility was different to the one that Shotaro, Sungchan and Jisung had grown up in. His facility had been kinder.

‘Do you want to kill him?’ Jaemin asks Jisung.

The first time Jaemin met Jisung, Jisung had been bathed in blood. He’d stood tall in the middle of the facility, and he’d stared down at the people who had raised him as they died. Jisung was a killer, and a good one at that, but he’d never been as terrifying as that first night Jaemin had broken into his facility and offered him a way out.

But Jaemin can see the shadow of that today.

‘Of course.’

‘Jupiter’s not going to be happy,’ Shotaro says, although Jaemin is sure that he doesn’t actually care. ‘I thought he wanted everyone alive, so that he could get intel.’

‘Jupiter doesn’t get a say in what we do,’ Jaemin says, ‘not anymore.’

Jaemin slips on his domino mask, striding down the driveway towards the warehouse. He’s already has complete control of cameras, but he knows better than to walk around without his mask on. Jisung has pulled his on as well, while Sungchan and Shotaro have opted for a cheap medical mask that covers the bottom of their faces.

Despite the fact that he’s turned the cameras off, Jaemin hopes that they’re watching them walk down towards the building. There’s nothing quite like the static against his skin as they send off SOS messages that will never be delivered, nothing quite like the way someone looks when they’ve been waiting in fear.

He knows they make for an unusual sight; four men in cargo pants and t-shirts, not a weapon in sight but masks obscuring their identities. He knows they make for an intimidating sight.

‘One hour,’ Jaemin says. ‘No more, no less.’

Shotaro, Sungchan and Jisung had grown up in the same building but on separate floors, and they had never met each other until Jaemin broke them out. They were each trained to be the best, each trained to perfection, and Jaemin knows that eventually their handlers, their trainers, their doctors, would have pitted them against each other until only the best of the three remained.

They were trained to fight alone, and they were terrifying on their own, and by all rights they should not be able to work together. But they’d struck a balance in the years since they clung to Jaemin and decided not to let go, one that means that the three of them are brutally efficient.

One hour is more than enough time for them.

‘An hour and a half,’ Jisung counters. ‘In case we want to have some fun.’

Jaemin tilts his head to the side, thinks of the barren rooms and the blank-faced scientists that filed around them day after day. ‘Fair enough.’

The three of them are faster, more agile than Jaemin, and they flit off into the night in the blink of an eye. Jaemin is more content to follow behind, each step steady and careful as he makes his way through the front door. His shoulder is still aching from being stabbed a week ago, and tonight’s fight isn’t for him. All he has to do is be the distraction, as Jisung, Shotaro and Sungchan rip them out from underneath.

He walks with purpose and makes sure to blow each light bulb as he walks past it, casting the space behind him into darkness. Jaemin has cut the camera recordings, already destroyed chance of what happens tonight being kept, but he’s let them keep their live feeds. He wants them to see him.

‘Hello? Anyone home?’ he calls, because the entrance to the warehouse is empty, bar a computer that’s flickering by the entrance. He places a palm against it, unnecessary but dramatic, and close his eyes.

Computers one of Jaemin’s least favourite pieces of technology to work with, mainly because he has to work with what’s already there, navigate the pathways that cross between the pre-existing hardware and software. That doesn’t mean it’s hard for him, however, to break into them.

He can do that in a second, just light he can pause the Wi-Fi in the air where it beats away at his skin, crawls up the back of his neck.

‘Evidently weren’t expecting me,’ he says, because it takes him less than two minutes to break into the computer, and another thirty seconds for it to unfold the entire map of the warehouse. He turns to the nearest camera, smiles up at it because he knows there’s someone listening on the other side. ‘Next time burn the damn things if you don’t want me to get into them.’

He plugs in one of his flash drives and starts uploading what he can onto it. It’s more a backup than anything else, anything on the computer, on this network, will be sitting at the back of Jaemin’s mind for as long as he needs it to. He thinks, briefly, of the one that he left behind with Haechan, and wonders if the hero ever dared to try and decrypt it or if he just handed it over to those fancy agents behind the scenes and didn’t think twice about it.

He wouldn’t be surprised if it were the second of the two.

Behind his eyes, Jaemin can see the others as they rush through the corridors. They’re fast, but not too so fast that they don’t show up on the cameras, and he knows that their flitting shadows are undoubtedly as intimidating as the sight of him breaking through their defences.

It allows him to keep an eye on them, to keep an eye on Jisung especially, and he tucks it away in the corner of his mind as he begins to weave his way through the hallways of the warehouse. It’s been converted into small modular offices, computers and tablets buzzing against his skin as he makes his way through the doors that separate them. Each section is closed off, locked with a biometric lock that would be a challenge to break through except Jaemin.

He pushes through each door, lock clicking open with ease, and Jaemin wonders if the people are running away from him. He can feel them, the phones and the watches that congregate together, and none are near him, none are close.

Not that it matters to him. They’re getting closer to Jisung, to Sungchan, to Shotaro and that is all that matters.

This isn’t a facility like the ones that he had spent time. No-one is being trained here, no-one is being raised here, and that means that Jaemin’s only objective is to get information. He doesn’t have to do anything except wander through the rooms, shepherd the few people that are near him towards the others, hope there is something on their computers that can be helpful.

Then.

Jaemin’s eyes dart back to the front of the warehouse, to the entrance that he had stormed through only fifteen minutes earlier.

There’s a buzz of electricity, of technology, that he knows better than he should. It’s not like these computers in the room, dulled and tangled together on the network that they run on. It’s sharp, distinct, and just that little bit more than what he’s been listening to.

It’s the buzz of the radios that the heroes use, that expensive, specialised technology that only one superhero team uses. It’s the buzz of a specific radio, a frequency that vibrates at the base of his skull because it’s the only one that he listens out for.

‘Well, well,’ he murmurs. ‘I didn’t think you were going to be here. I didn’t think that those fancy agents would have let you come here.’

He looks at Haechan, dressed in his dark green suit, with his chin tipped back up in defiance. Haechan rarely speaks back to Jaemin, not for a few moments, but that makes it so much more fun to him. Jaemin blinks away that shadows of Jisung and the others, his human eye and his cybernetic on the boy in front of him. It allows him to zoom in, to sharpen in on Haechan, to see the slight twitch of his jaw underneath the mask.

‘Oh, they don’t know that you’re here, do you?’ Jaemin lets his grin grow. It’s fun, wandering through the warehouse, knowing that people were finally going to get what they deserve. But it’s more fun being opposite Haechan. ‘Look at you, breaking the rules for once.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Haechan’s voice is always refreshing, tight and careful when he finally speaks to Jaemin. Sometimes he doesn’t speak for minutes at a time, long minutes where Jaemin just talks and talks and waits for him to break.

It’s the first spark of victory.

‘Helping out some friends,’ Jaemin says.

He doesn’t miss how Haechan dips back as he steps forward, doesn’t miss how he slips into a more defensive move. Haechan has always preferred non-technological weapons, once he figured out that Jaemin could activate and deactivate anything with a simple flick of his finger. It means that Jaemin doesn’t know what’s waiting for him, doesn’t know if Haechan is going to dare strike.

‘You have friends?’

It’s said with a certain amount of disbelief, and Jaemin would be offended if not for how utterly human Haechan sounds and looks. It feels like another win, another piece of the hero that has been stripped away by Jaemin.

‘I have friends,’ he says with a shrug, ‘I’ve even got roommates. Price of rent, and all.’

Haechan looks up at him, because Jaemin has taken each step with a steady slowness until he’s right in front of Haechan. He looks up at him, but Jaemin can feel the thrill of danger twitching through his body. He’s larger than Haechan, enhanced through years of modifications that he’s been forced to make to himself, but Haechan is strong, smart, and quick and Jaemin knows that when it comes to it, it will be almost a fair fight.

‘How’s the shoulder?’ Haechan says instead. He isn’t running, but he isn’t defiant, and Jaemin loves this kind of day the best. When Haechan is all rolling anger and righteousness, but as captivated by Jaemin as Jaemin is by him.

‘Healing,’ Jaemin says. ‘You know that it takes more than a little knife to stop me.’

Haechan laughs, then he punches Jaemin in the jaw.

Jaemin’s a lot of things, but he’s shit at taking a punch and it’s almost enough for him to stumble, just a little bit. Jisung would be mad, if he knew, but Jaemin doesn’t care about proper fighting stance in moments like this. He lifts his hand, his robotic one because it always makes Haechan’s breath catch in fear, to rub at his jaw.

‘You really have to learn to ground yourself better,’ Haechan mocks, and it’s almost like when they were kids, almost like when Haechan was all backchat and fire and all the things that drew Jaemin to him in the first place. ‘You can’t always hide behind your robots.’

‘Thinking of teaching me a few lessons?’ Jaemin says, he knows that his grin is bright and bold across his face because he feels delighted in this moment. ‘I promise that I’m a good student.’

‘Somehow, I doubt that,’ Haechan says, but he reaches up to grab at the collar of Jaemin’s shirt and that’s all the warning Jaemin gets before Haechan is kissing him.

Delight sparks up his spine. Jaemin tips Haechan’s head backwards just enough so that he can get the right angle, the one that makes Haechan pant and gasp and, if he’s lucky, moan. He can’t help the way his robotic hand rests on Haechan’s hip, because not only does it steady Haechan where he stands but it makes him shake, just that little bit.

‘Fuck,’ Haechan mutters, and that’s all Jaemin needs to slide his hand lower so that he can lift Haechan up. ‘ _Fuck_.’ Haechan wraps his legs around Jaemin’s waist, as Jaemin hitches him up that bit higher and backs them into one of the offices.

If he were human, Jaemin wouldn’t have been able to do this properly, but his arm and his leg are able to bear the extra weight. There are times that he wishes he were still whole, still human. But the feeling of Haechan panting against his lips, the feeling of his fingers twisting into Jaemin’s hair and tugging it, is almost enough to make it worth it.

‘I hate you,’ Haechan mumbles against Jaemin’s lips. ‘So much.’

Jaemin laughs as he drops Haechan down onto the desk, looking across at him and his pink, pink lips. There’s so much anger in his eyes, but they’re still dark and heavy, focused on Jaemin and Jaemin alone. It’s enthralling, enticing, knowing that this is Jaemin’s, knowing that he’s the dirty little secret that Haechan can never tell at the risk of losing everything.

‘I know you do, sweetheart.’ He leans in again, caging Haechan against the desk, and when he kisses Haechan he makes sure to make it filthy, to devour Haechan. He kisses away any sweetness, any kindness, and leaves only the fire that burns through him, that he is sure burns through Haechan. ‘And yet you keep coming back to me, don’t you?’

He places a hand against Haechan’s ribs, feeling the weave of the super suit against the skin and wonders if his robotic hand would be strong enough to rip it. ‘I miss when you guys didn’t have money,’ he says, and it earns him a soft bite against his lip before Haechan starts edging over to his jaw. ‘Back when you were in those delightful leggings. It was so much easier to get you out of everything, so much easier to get to you.’ Even with the vests, even with the protective elbow and knee pads that he could and would wear, it was so easy for Jaemin to feel the beginnings of abs that Haechan never really achieve, to dig his fingers into the flesh of Haechan’s thighs and feel them shake. ‘This new super suit, it makes you look hot. But really, it’s not easy access at all.’

‘It’s not supposed to be, asshole,’ Haechan says. He draws back from Jaemin’s neck, and there’s something like triumph in his eyes as he looks down.

‘I could make you something better,’ Jaemin bargains, into the space between their faces, lifting his eyes to meet the warm brown of Haechan’s. ‘Something stronger, safer, sexier. If you decide to join me, us.’

‘Bite me,’ Haechan hisses, and Jaemin almost does.

He draws away instead.

The game is over and they both know it, but Jaemin takes a moment to just take in the sight of Haechan, sitting on the desk with his pink flushed cheeks and his kiss-bitten lips. This is his victory, and they both know it. Jaemin wants to immortalise this forever, wants to take this to Hana, to Dul, to all the righteous heroes that dart around through the night and tell them that even if Haechan is on their team, even if Haechan fights by their side, a part of him will always belong to Jaemin.

Jisung is wiping blood off his knuckles when they re-join Jaemin, exactly one hour and a half after they entered the building. He thinks that perhaps there’s something a little lighter in the way Jisung walks, something in his smile. The first time he saw Jisung kill a man, Jisung’s gaze had been cold and bored as he stepped away from the cooling bodies and followed Jaemin out of the room. That had perhaps been the most discomfiting thing about Jisung at the time, all of fourteen years old and as hardened as assassins decades older than him. But now there’s a smile on his face, now there’s satisfaction and it makes Jaemin proud to know how far he has come.

‘Good?’ he asks.

‘Very good,’ Jisung says. Shotaro and Sungchan let out their own grunts of agreement, have their own smiles tilting at the corners of their lips, but they don’t have that wholehearted relief that seems to be coursing through Jisung. ‘We should get going, before the police get here.’

‘Or the heroes,’ Sungchan says. ‘Although it looks like at least one has already arrived.’

Jaemin doesn’t bother hiding the marks that he knows are blooming across his jaw and neck, instead almost tilts his head up in pride so they can see.

‘I don’t think he’s going to ask for any backup anytime soon,’ Jaemin says with a smirk, ‘although we should definitely leave. The less they can tie to us, the better.’

Jaemin pauses at the entrance of the warehouse. The computer that he had been backing up has finished, but the flash drive that he’d plugged in is gone. Jaemin can’t help his bark of a laugh. ‘Little shit,’ he says, shaking his head as he walks over to the computer. He clicks out of the screen, shaking his head, before he blows up the computer in a single move.

‘That going to be a problem?’ Jisung asks. His voice is lower, travelling between just the two of them as Shotaro and Sungchan lead them out of the room.

‘I’ve already got it all.’ Jaemin taps his head, the side with his bionic eye, and it earns him something that’s almost a grimace. ‘I’ll be interested to see what he does though.’

‘We should keep an eye on him,’ Jisung says, all steel and ice and Jaemin hates that he has to agree with him. The first flash drive was an accident, something that he could write off as an act of carelessness on his behalf. Two flash drives could be trouble.

‘Fine,’ Jaemin says. He’ll have to pull on a jacket, maybe a hat to hide himself but that shouldn’t be too hard. He could recognise the buzz of Haechan’s equipment anywhere and knows that it won’t take him too long to find Haechan even the crowds of technology that fill the streets of Seoul. ‘I’ll let you know if anything happens.’

‘Call me,’ Jisung says, ‘if you need me.’

Jaemin shoots off a salute, before he jogs down the driveway and away from the warehouse. He can taste the remnants of Haechan in the air, and it doesn’t take him long to make his way into the suburbs, doesn’t take him long to be surrounded by the hubbub of people.

He snatches a hoodie of the back of a restaurant chair, and a hat from a bag as someone jostles by him and pulls them over until everything that makes him Jaemin is hidden away in the night.

Normally, Haechan likes to dance through the night, likes to leap from rooftop to rooftop, but Jaemin feels that he’s lower to the ground, feels the way that he’s woven through the crowds. Jaemin wonders if he’s running from Jaemin, or if he’s running from something else.

He wonders how quickly Haechan melted into the crowd, with his forest green tights, and his pitch-black domino mask. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was quick, Haechan had a fluidity to him, a humanness to him that Jaemin lost a long time ago.

He stops, because the technology is prickling against his skin, and he knows that he’s close. He wonders if the hairs at the back of Haechan’s neck are standing up, if he can sense that Jaemin is nearby. Or if he’s oblivious, if he feels safe surrounded by a crowd of civilians.

Jaemin wonders if he’ll notice Jaemin follow him home, wonders if he’ll notice Jaemin waiting to see what he does with the flash drive. He would, he thinks, because Haechan is nothing but stunningly competent at being a hero. It makes Jaemin all the more excited.

‘Gotcha,’ he murmurs, and looks up to take in the people around him. It isn’t too crowded, the dinner rush melting away as people head to bars and clubs for the evening, but it takes Jaemin a moment to pin the technology that calls out to him, to pin the hero he knows like the back of his hand.

He recognises the light brown hair, pulled back with a headband to keep it from falling in his face with a fight, he recognises the steady beat of his phone’s signal strapped against his thigh, he recognises the tilt of his jaw, he recognises the ass in too-tight pants.

But he also recognises the tilt of his smile, the sound of his laugh, the way his eyes light up in delight when he sees something that he likes. He recognises the way he considers the food in front of him, lips quirked up into a little pout as he tries to decide.

He recognises Haechan, _Donghyuck_ , and Jaemin’s entire world drops away.


End file.
